I believe we all sense that below the ordinary hum of our everyday language reside deep, exciting, troubling, thoughts, ones that are difficult to articulate, but very real. These poems were written over the course of several years of grief and new joy (the sort of feelings we all go through as adults), in order to uncover thoughts, feelings and ideas we sense are present, but which are not ordinarily available to us. These poems do not require any special knowledge or training to be read. In fact, the belief that these poems do require such knowledge or training is inimical to their purpose in the world, which is to be available for anyone who needs them. Everything I say in the poems is exactly what I mean. The words, even if they are used in unusual ways or activated or have more attention given to them than is usual, mean exactly what they always do in regular life. If, while reading these poems, you find yourself trying to "read poetry" as you were unfortunately taught to do in school, thinking about symbols (when he writes X he really means Y), continually attempting to translate the poem back into the most ordinary and untroubling terms, you will be on the boat, but you will be missing everything that is actually happening. Only by taking everything literally, and reading these poems as if the language in them is the same language that we see in novels or newspaper articles or grocery lists, will we be able to go together into these poems, in order to try to feel more honest and alive.

Comments

These poems seem to ask of us to pay attention, when of course most of us feel so burdened by paying attention to politics, obstructionist politics, dunderheads unable to grasp Keynesian economics, news events, constant encroachments upon our creative minds.

Mr. Zapruder is brave to unflinchingly bring truth about our solitary existence, the 'super creepy b & b,' before us, in fine and capable Zapruder tradition, in the way that Hamlet does, seeking basic human truths in a modern pile of vanity. At the bottom of his use of words, is the same powers that Shakespeare employed, to take a commonplace thing, your 'pocket,' or 'the black box,' for instance, (no one had thought of using 'diet coke' yet so far in our vast literary tradition) and bring out a good part of potential poetic meaning amidst the burdens of living in pop culture ubiquitousness.